Chad Norman – A Fawn’s Stare

Norman profile Dec 2020

Download PDF Here

Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Volume Two, December 2020.

Chad Norman lives beside the high-tides of the Bay of Fundy, Truro, Nova Scotia. He has given talks and readings in Denmark, Sweden, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, America, and across Canada. is poems appear in publications around the world and have been translated into Danish, Albanian,  Romanian, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Polish. His collections are Selected & New Poems (Mosaic Press), and Squall: Poems In The Voice Of Mary Shelley, is out from Guernica Editions.


A Fawn’s Stare

Shortly after feeding the family
and speaking with adults I know
the blessing of healthy ears
led my wonder to the forest
growing in an industrial park
when the intermittent brave caws
confirmed the annual hope I carry
to say out loud to myself, “Yes, babies!”

Two new members now make seven
as parents watch what I do
happily seated on a stack of pallets
behind some business the virus reduces,
a time only I, the human, feels threatened
as well as what a few isolated moments
fill all five senses with when I lower
my head having heard some other sound
to witness a fawn’s stare, another new one,
peeking up out of grass wet with gifts of rain,
ears like mine gathering, tiny spotted body
soon to turn and bolt back to mother.

How time can slow down, even stop us,
all these lives finding life somehow,
those with years running out, those
able to bear births with a trust almost,
but still hide to protect and teach.
As I stand to begin the trek to my home
new little spots, new open beaks
become all that is necessary to believe
tomorrow is there, perhaps, anxious to arrive.


After Leaving A Lousy Job

Another new morning
comes with
another new education:

I can finally agree
the winter is over
as spring surrounds us,

the proof once more
being how a starling
feeds one of her young
among the impatient many,

quite like the opened dandelions
and the warm mothering sun.


Almost Sixty-One Today

I hear
the happiness
in
so many caws.

I see
the family,
black-feathered,
in
so many trees.

Morning
is best,
they
want you
most then.


© Chad Norman